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To Fit Ocean into Cup
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Alls my life I had to fight They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. Isaiah:11:9
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Look at God He was able to praise God through a busted lip singing Hallelujah slinging bloody spit. When asked how is this? He replied I still have a tongue, marvel not at my significance but at the way sound emits and vibrates until it eclipses the silence in your earlobe. Praise through battered lips or stammered through a lisp is nothing more than an acknowledgement of reality. We all are here because before it was written it was spoken. Consider this my contribution to creation.
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The shore attempts to number the sand (Welcome & Thanks)
There are too many people to name; way too many individual pebbles providing path for my feet to walk to the water, for me to build an accurate image here. I remember the second time I was baptized in, the basement of a church my family was visiting. I remember the frigid awakening, breaking that surface. I remember the warming comfort offered by my family, now larger than before. There’s something about a congregational song that just resonates in the bone a bit more when you sing together. There’s something about a solo that is so emphatically & intricately devotional that it connects all in the room willing to lend themselves to an emotion.
In this sacred space, the sanctuary of vulnerability, I strived to submerge myself into a blend of both. There ought to be enough geography for me & you to fit our healing into the same venues. There ought to be enough land for us all to exist within the same creation. & really, all I ever really wanted to do was learn how to swim through it all. Sometimes life means more than we can contain on our own Thanks to my family, my friends, my God, & the poets. & welcome to those I’ve never met
A special gratitude issued to Lauryn Hill's “Just Like Water” & Corinne Bailey Rae’s “The Sea”
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I.
Droplets
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How to fit an ocean in a cup In spare time Sonny wasn't sanging blues he was painting oceans with his tongue the color of freedom or a cool swig of water on a fierce summer's day the first time he tried to fit ocean into cup, plain to sea the words wouldn't land right on paper his thoughts keep drifting off margin leaving the pencap muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during a Mississippi flood, or an economy crash the size of 747's. How does one take flight mid-hurricane? Seam the astral, the ethereal, heaven-plane with the here-now? Say "Hear now, the sound of revolution creeping like cow-tippers on the sides of creeks rests more water than made for cups" Perspective is a gift and Sonny was or is a writer, like me, he could spar with words and leave the ring grinning
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Sonny had a good hook, a chorus of charisma so to say, no good with boxes though or caps for that matter but he knew how to draw water, deeply too. Make it swell in the soul of a being here was his niche, carved out in the moment he stayed swimming through the blues and the corals too. As long as it sat on his tongue like fresh paint he rarely dyed, just coated and if the meaning was heavy enough, soaked through clean but never clear. Mississippi river writer he was, boy could stroke the blues out of a tree, stoic as it is. bled blues mingled red indigo kid, he was indigenous to praying that he wasn't misunderstood
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Sky-thirst Muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during Mississippi floods his skin was soaked with earth day stories like how to build a conservatory of peace. Piece of wartime lodged in his memory like gun-shy shells it makes little noise. Annoyed with living uninundated, he was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans clacking together like castanets or sonar sounds. His skin was mudsoaked, caking over with life he was constantly lapping from riverbeds, yet he didn't get much sleep. Under his eyelids were muddy and overfilled as riverbanks, counting time as gold bullion. Sonny stays sky-mine ..
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Most crimes have motives, but trouble He was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans, building bridges on bludgeoned whirlpools; waves an unwarranted beating against their own weta monsoon of bad news. No anchors most 5:00's shadows of a story rarely told, the silence is so telling. So he kept the gulf coast in his war strewn vocal cords tied up his cool some days more present than prisoner. To be free for a second is to be prisoner of momentum, shift is another word for switch lanes right? Imagine life lived between the yellow lines. He could drive his presence through a steel-backed wall or skull. Most days he just let it seep through like troubled waters. Waiting for the current to calm, nerves
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Chords that bind cords tied up his cool so we just strung em up, (sneakers stay laced) on a telephone wire made to call up the function of a violin, world's most inconspicuous melody is the loss of choice faded in the background static of someone else's funk, masquerading as your jazz and the sax wasn't that good neither. But the love is always worth the work. See it takes miles to get to the cool eye of the storm, you can see it through. Rollin' tides in the south as deep as wading waters in hymns we try to find the birthplace of the telephone wire; (as we use them) how do you hold the cool? Like a stolen ocean, tentatively for it is not yours. Oration hereditarily hymned So that a. b.
There is still time we can learn (to keep it movin’)
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On lunch pails, bail, and cardiac arrest But the love is always worth the work, you can see it in his eyes he's heart hungry. Hasn't yet learned the double meaning of feed because his needs have teeth. Trained his calf muscles to endure the strain from running in and out of love with himself and her and her too tethered to the idea of not being alone to see it was never really possible. It was never really possible to be a lone wolfing down another daydream in hopes to regurgitate a truthfully gorgeus ain't always ease, it's work getting these words out but the work is always worth the love, too much heart to stuff into a container, let alone a body of water It was never really possible unless He made it so, easy to love her it was easy for her too.
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Amor en ample Too much heart to stuff into a container, let alone a body of water. Sum of him simply incapable of being submerged under definition, some memories too massive for Merriam Webster. A moment with edges too vivid to tangle in word-web sights can't cradle the scent of salt licked azure in vein, they wedge torrents into puddles only to gaze as the boundaries well over, with substance. Enough wonder in one day, to fill. Sun daze with ease. His was a brilliant heart beating with vigor, sometimes erratically enough to bruise chest cavity, but softly enough to stain with watermarks, only.
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His heart Soft enough to stain with watermarks only she could be as soft as silk and satin, in his memories, vivid and brisk as sides of mountaintops. He had to get his lungs back, borrowed by frigid air at the top of mountains more treasured than anchor at sea, some things keep you"funny, I amble up alps burdened and freed, feeling I'm always losing ground and gaining sky." He could see in her eyes when the rain clouds were coming. Her humid heart sometimes hovered over forehead. Had a knack for knowing when and when not to be transparent. Tried and true method of getting Sonny to be baby blue, electric yellow and burnt sienna when it was time to. Jaded as July sky mid-summer's rain at the thought of inauthenticity. She was genuinely frenetic, an eclectic marvel
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of a storm funneling from her roots the nature to be a hectic calm. Few other meteorologists could fathom, or disband even a league to truly appreciate her atmosphere's barometric pressure for its honest art. Troubling as the first flickering of a storm flung from flint, into ascending calm, was her perceived absence of mind but
she was tuned in, a thundering beauty, bright flash of intellect she was as soft as raindrops wept into a newly opened notebook page
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As if the torrent fizzles out, he had the nature to be a hectic calm, his thoughts, tendency to be pitter patter Mondays. Slow drizzle, teasing windshield wiper, yet glass fracture Fridays. All storm and hail, aftercalm sweeps through, all storm inhaled, kept in chest cavity a fray of congestion thundering in blood vessels jet stream in his dreams drafting up funnel cloud foundations. Had to let that sonic, boom one day, emotions tend to outfox sound boxes and barriers until penned up passions expand and contract across the page, like words left dangling from edge of uncaged rib, emptying its contents from the I of the storm knew we wouldn't come across tone of deluge so he left it trill as wind blowing through the tip of the tongue against teethridge; no time or space for missed translation.
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How to wash an ocean Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva splayed on bits of moon matter, tugging at its measure, the mid-section of it bulging in his speech. He spoke like, brain matter"purify your knowledge" -to a collage of GMO pushers, cropped picture gazers, a fissure in ethics, the type to never second guess J. Edgar. Yet he spoke to them in quantum love unquantized devotion, dispelling notions of unqualified. Infinitely larger than increments, incidents, or singular imprints. Sonny spoke a timeless oil pastel in a universe full of Van Goghs, Dalis, and Warhols, he spoke a true art. It was simply this, we drink water because we know that we must, not because we must understand why. Sonny spoke like cups of water but he was never good with containers. Worth is lost sometimes, in a rusty faucet. Sure enough,
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the only pipes Sonny could keep clean were his own
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A palpable silence the mid-section of it bulging in his speech, its toes scraped the top of more definitions than his sound seemed to. Gave a sermon of mosaic nature on how the laws of physics transmuted through nonverbal tongue flitters transcending perception, fluent Sanskrit scribbled against the inner walls of the mouth. Mimes talk with jaws wired shut, Sonny could milk honey and vinegar out of empty aural receptors. With bare acoustics he redressed wounds, learned that from Oasis, the keeper of his cool, womb of his emotional stability, the two had a dialect running between them, flush discourse flowing courting existence. And when words stop gushing forth, a tangible caesura. Could see the curves in the break of the language, languish from beautiful vernacular. With others it was sometimes tongue and no groove, or mother absent tongue, inconsistent other tongue numb, low numbered synapse tongue, spoon-fed better than forked I suppose.
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Sonny stayed smooth as blue magic grease though, well learned in the creases of silence, conformed to comfort, in the right presence he could talk an orange purple as a grape when he chose to
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Estuary Gave a sermon of mosaic nature on how laws of physics transmuted. Inertia rendered useless, as objects tended to stay in motion, making way for weighted bungee cord synapses, propelled as far as elasticity of thoughtsnapped back thinking caps refracted compacted and often redacted, or recited, as the point of view drizzles into new line of sight. He cited something new in this blue truth of a lesson, so ex-citing couldn't help but temporarily lose his vision. Eyes misrembered the gravitational pull of the undercurrents, of boxes and labels and words that confined like too tight collars, or scholars in a poetry cipher slanging cufflinks on bars hemming in the meaning while the tiles strain to traverse where the earth became so sturdy it quicksanded one, to a state of stagnation so that movement was made still life. And the brine, bride to the cradling of creativity was hard to savor.
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Frontal Lobe Backwash Ripples He cited something new in this blue truth of a lesson sadness is only as somatic as jubilee, asked if she knew what it meant to believe in a tangible freedom,
an unfettering of the soul
resonating like tidal waves out of the gut's meeting place with cerebellum, couldn't jail him more than one could the measure of the ocean, the love of God, or an oar's usefulness to a sea-stranded stranger. One who mistook staccato for floating couldn't help but stray-strum sound etching in a pool of thought. Lagoons to Atlantic depths, the breadth of difference subtractable by the oneness of it all. Ain't it funny how two drops of ocean string along a line clear as the border between Monday midnight and Tuesday before dusk. Dawn comes in a surge mixed and mastered as ocean's mist, not much tampering still the groove is sweet, twice-laid tune tied together by defiance of meaning, coupled with
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abundant feeling, guttural as the sound
of grits popping in the throat of the skillet.
In that noise was the lesson as ephemeral, as eternal. How some days, some ways, on Afternoon Sundays things can just be as they are
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To those who carry cups in their foreheads To believe in a tangible freedom, an unfettering of the cerebrum like lucid lunar eclipses of ego. Sonny dripped ocean off the cusp of his hand, the first stroke sculpture of deepest cut, so it seams as art tends To do this in cup form foams around function, droplets we are miniature containers fragmented and formatted into basin, base reservoirs building to the pinnacle of fulfillment. Filaments moistening the brilliance, Sonny understood how to wade in the shrines of others, even out the peeled paint in their evanescence. This was the exhale of hydrogen, a common exhuming of the liveliest corpse, to remember a permeable memory of person beyond catalogue cup beyond category. Because Sonny was no good with caps, yet fluent in cultures; he felt the dissolving of borders, in his neural network, a harmony with the ocean composed throughout time lacquered the brim of him
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azul as the pool he treaded gold, apple nectar
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Nighttime naan from the Nile peeled paint in their evanescence plied through and through twisted around bed, slumbering river as jar of twine. Needle point night escapes by the tip of the thread unraveling visions of scorching through constellation cocoon, emerging candescent as universes. Can you imagine dusk dressing body of water like not yet plucked husk? Their self-actualized glory sometimes shone through shell in tufts. Children of sun, dried up dreams sopping up nearby lakes. Death-thirst deferred, their very existence drunk resilience, a refusal to be destroyed and destitute. See, peeled paint wore like war trophies, remembered way back when, youths' face too caked over with blood, sweat, and tears to see the art in their smiles, breathe air from their aspirations. Students who broke assimilation to the gray, the mundane in two, in tatters, and over their knees like barrel of bat. Battered and bruised by boxes, locked in a sound foreign to fidelity. Their enlightenment married to and marred by faux judgement: an adultery to adolescence, an alienation to the otherness
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of culture. Their boundaries; controlled, conditioned, and cultured into neat half pint vessels only truly learning to sail themselves when there is nothing left to be priced over their innate "I" peeled paint in their evanescence, only for Sonny to prove oceans are to be drenched
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Still spoken through sand caked lips dried up dreams sopping up nearby lakes Sonny dove the depth of his temporal lobes to touch the tip of the ocean without using his body. He was thirsty, tapped out by two-toned suit types tapdancing on the faucet in no linear line; limestone deposits dusting the den of his quench. Sonny knew what it meant to have dreams dehydrated, dangling out of the attic that no one asked the house owner if it was alright to install. Knew dark, knew derelict, diasporic. Knew freedom sometimes meant returning to a home not yet vacated, and plucking unsolicited for sale signs from soil. Sonny knew shoot for star, amputate an asteroid for spare parts. Jet pack junkyard just waiting, up there. Take something heavenly and heave yourself Into the black sea, hang to a shooting star rays of light are folkloric shotgun shells, warm bullets most treasured in the deepest trench. Misplaced Moroccan, Mariana trench narrative robbed of name and nobility yet marauders mid night escape into the blank
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archives never to be chronicled as less than pioneers of a native land all too unnatural, to them. Fugitive imperialism on the lam. How does one drink an entire ocean? Do you end up deeply, deeply moved? They say everything vibrates including the sea. Everything vibrant inducing the sea. Is the energy not emphatic? Are you not entertained? When heaven weeps an ocean into the Sahara nothing stays the same. Sonny knew desert like child-hood abandonment. Dried up dreams his heritage, Oasis his bride to be Mojave miracles lining her mouth her sea salt saliva, salvation must be reflected in the puddles teeming from tongue. Her smile drawn on yet, quick with the breadth of life. Under the pencil carvings resuscitated skin in fleshy acrylic. Taut teeth toeing the line between watercolor, oil pastel, and flour white anemone, ambling into the anomaly of compassion on gloomy Monday mornings. Her praise porous of anything pivotal, the pulley with extra levers, the cog too colorful to gray into the machine. The malignant growth of nature, her medium in which to mauve the margins into medicine. Oasis knew what it meant to pool in all place for many moons and ancient ages. Knew it took patience
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to get healthy, shake scabs from society's branding iron. Sonny knew what it meant to kiss, the cool crisp river, refreshing the forgetting of his lisp. Knew what it meant to be hydrated. To have never wanted to place ocean puddle by creekful into cup is to have never had thirst, to never have experienced dream world drenched in everything intangible and yet felt through the fingertips, tantalizing the tongue. To have never been immersed in the ebb of it all, indulging in the infinite all-encompassing cascade. It is to have seen a semblance of the arterial aliveness in your aura.
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II.
amalgamate into puddle
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puddle piece #1 Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during Mississippi floods he was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans the mid-section of it bulging in his speech the nature to be a hectic calm. Soft enough to stain with watermarks only peeled paint in their evanescence. dried up dreams sopping up nearby lakes But the love is always worth the work to believe in a tangible freedom, an unfettering, no time or space for missed translation. Gave a sermon of mosaic nature on how the laws of physics transmuted too much heart to stuff into a container, let alone a body of water He cited something new in this blue truth of a lesson cords tied up his cool
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puddle piece #2(cords tied up his cool) to believe in a tangible freedom, an unfettering, of mosaic nature sopping up nearby lakes too much heart to stuff into a container, let alone a body of water. But the love is always worth the work. muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during Mississippi floods, dried up dreams soft enough to stain with watermarks only. Gave a sermon on how the laws of physics transmuted. peeled paint in their evanescence. Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva no time or missed translation.
space for
the mid-section of it bulging in his speech He cited something new in this blue truth of a lesson. the nature to be a hectic calm. he was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans
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puddle piece #3 muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during Mississippi floods, the mid-section of it bulging in his speech he was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans – peeled paint in their evanescence -no time or space for missed translation. dried up dreams sopping up nearby lakes, the nature to be a hectic calm, to believe in a tangible freedom, an unfettering. cords tied up his cool Gave a sermon of mosaic nature on how the laws of physics transmuted. He cited something new in this blue truth of a lesson, Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva. too much heart to stuff into a container, let alone a body of water
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puddle piece #4 Soft enough to stain with watermarks only, Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva peeled paint in their evanescence.
puddle piece #4.5 he was often trudging through troubled waters and hollowed oceans, muddy and overfilled as Missouri banks during Mississippi floods. But the love is always worth the work.
puddle piece #5 Gave a sermon of mosaic nature on how the laws of physics transmuted dried up dreams, soft enough to stain with watermarks only no time or missed translation.
space for
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puddle piece #6(On how oceans drift apart) Sonny spoke like aqua, shades of blue green saliva soft enough to stain with watermarks only no time
or space
for missed translation.
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III.
as the tide pulls in a novel
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The style of Sonny, as magnetic as the tide pulls in a novel. Courtroom Casanova bailing out lost (black) boys and girls listen up to the tugs at sea. The shoreline fell in love with the motions, A sea of rising in the swell of its connection to the ocean, bits of each other's storybook ending engrained in the natural sway of it all, so romantic how lives tie together or float into each other. Breaths running into each other like words. Breaths running from each other like words. Found the pattern in an essay of marathons, where the chest rises and falls with every sentence gushing forth in waves, on the page to preserve the art of emotion, wellsprings as salient
II. as the tide, pulls in a novel we see the coast caress each chapter not yet immersed
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enough in Sun to be concrete still too wet to slide together like puzzle pieces sometimes our stories get lost beside and underneath each other. Maybe it's just the magnetic tug of the ocean moments drifting in time sea, life has a rhythm smoothing out our shipwrecks, chalkboard erases as we learn new formulas are a bit more organic than ancient math critical thinking more alchemic than coal mines critical feeling as inherent as breathing unabated in lungs, left an emotion like bay leaf, best admired for flavor but sentiment better savored not swallowed whole. Not until read in heart braille, this is what books are made of or for, grinding emotions between the dense of your teeth and gritting through sentience . Chewing through confusion until the words become as buoyant
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III. as the novel the tide pulls in, soaks into writing and permeates plotline, heavenly diffusion, feuding twist in plots celestial untying and retying of knots. A yacht is as good as a raft if the sentences flow easy. See Sonny lived in catch phrases before he met her. She taught him how to massage a composition from one word. Always loved the way she Bached the melody into raindrops, turned thunderstorm into soothing art form malleable as the function of water. As versatile as a free verse in the mouth of a free mind, over what matters, hovering like a raincloud over Sahara. Oasis needs to be needed, proud parent to the cotton mouth picking cactus from lips. Sometimes he wrote with a lisp, meaning flitted in and out, pen swift as the flick of the wrist. Oasis was or is a great translator, a skill streaming through time
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dripping in care. An attention to detail soaking in ancient, love for understanding, sounds like a fair subset to each other. Fit hand in hand, cup and cup mirrored lids of each other. Love. Understanding. Compass ions are directions linking bond to bones joint feelings and mutual droplets of emotion, keeping the cool like sweat. Love can be as warm as blood or cold as dried tears. Sonny wanted to learn to swim or at least tread water, let the rhythm lift him, catch the wave
IV. in the tide pulls, love a novella without feeling like a bailiff, you know? Put the hammer down and bury it underneath the courtroom basement, a cemetery for misinformed verdicts. How do you staple person to body, fix, corrupt label on their forehead? What was broken? Expositions are the first ebbs of a soular essence eager to eke out its home
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in this sea bed-time story. It seems dreams sink into each other, swallowed through a hole in the flock of our shared imaginations. Everybody rights, kneads out the kinks in their stories. Sonny, a marine biologist of metaphors, he came up for air & beads of symbolism sat on his skin. He rarely died though, even if the meaning capsized his higher sensibilities. Just floated if it was light enough. He understood, there's one judge absolute in conviction, engrafted a gavel in the higher reason. The gift of the author evident as the tide pulls in a novel.
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IV.
the ocean begins to roar again.
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The pause the roar opens up Distance, the space between two souls and a word, two hands parted by air, or state lines, or class distinctions. Or the space between two synapses, made illusory by cerebellum. Distance is needle point and thread expanding in proximity, prying open the gap, linking one and two and filling them with decimals, it seems these days distance fills us not like dust in sinkhole and not unlike helium in a balloon stretched too far, a deluge of diffusion inundating space that was once ours. Distance, a tipping of equilibrium liberating we from the joint, me with each exploding second, time ticking collapsed hours into a million tiny bombs discharging the wrath of misrembering us.
Misrembering that an ocean is expansive, and each unit of water is onset to chilling body of heat. Maybe the key is in the open door, ocean floor swelling up to meet each bead on surface, eventually we learn that water ain't so separate and missing ain't so distant as two souls, too many words. That the gaps between gulfs can be bridged by a presence connecting us, as clouds are in union with the ocean.
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It reappears The universe moves ebbs and flows rise and fall of a chest under the heel of a sure foot right above the broken rib stabbing the lung when it’s not looking making for labored breaths. Plunge through the sun’s reflection. Upwards. Breathe this, nothing new. Universe moves when it ebbs, it flows. Toddler toes lapped while thrashing in the wading pool. The tides’ lips kissed the shore life folds into life.
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Light, water, or chocolate Water the light or else it tears, streaking down corners of hallways naked wounds salved up with cinnamon and turmeric, time less numeric, more spatial. Off the merit of still feeding breaths give praise always. Parched light
lamps in the dark, storyful arc of how the arches of heels were made for obeisance to the Sun, upwards not bowed, boughs branched palming the sky. Aerodynamics multiplied, light careens on air, measure of optics total breadth beading up the coolest condensation in biopics, the story of us
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Cloud sea scrolls A scroll unfolds on a story twice told of a lake in the sky clouds in the ocean boy met girl in his ab since she left side of his chest there was a note, two cocoa butter kisses in the brown of his bone lips mark the spot encasing her treasure chest rib cages come with keys, two to a lock made useless through voice stimulation. A voice as vibrant as a revived sea as ancient as love, or life.
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As above, so below Their love sort of like that moment Sun bathed in the sea at peak of the horizon, the crux of it cresting in a warm cool wave. Their love sort of like separation as sea looses sun from the cling of embrace; Sun leaving sea distant yet warm. A spinning of revolutions toward and into each other. A flow of light-years away and outwards. Snapshot of symbiosis, the way the warmth never wilts. The way the sea always soaks.
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Ode to what I run from To every brown girl I have burned black with my inferiority complex, for every bit of unwarranted attention I have sat aside in Sun to spoil, milk, soured with my indifference. To calcium turned lime sediment. Care turned too dirty, too grime. To the dormant ideology of this society, which sometimes enables me to be too doormat, too doorman at elite only hotels, too hostile to myself. To the moments lost because I was too passive, too past tense, too vast dense of derelict directions trapped in my compass. To all the paths better left untaken, to all the roads read with the feet of others, trodden down by monotone of carbon copy. To my ineptitude at correcting the pressure put on my lens from the periscope of others collecting upon my view. For the times I questioned my view of the surface as if my judgment, my originality lay submerged amongst the other droplets in the ocean.
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To the abyss, my gallop punched through, with the force of 22 lunges, 23 inch lungs propelling me forward through the other side as the top of the ocean caves in, against the loft of my back, shooting me upward into the succulent sweetness of the attic-sky. You are what I run from, you are what I run from.
I run on you
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Time dreams revelations Watched labels fade; stigmas singed at the root of it all is your life God-given stenciled into the fibers of your being here is no accident. Watched hands pluck at vacated rose petals; the new tree grew out of a flower every second is a seed every hour is here stripped from the clocks and weaved into a dreamer's coat for those who sleep in dictionaries and wake up words in the morning; your mistakes are your scapegoat redefine your life
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Like roots and mandibles
What did we call water before we knew to name it salute from sea; did we call it - in the way dry tongues clutch at the sky for poached condensation, to sit in clay combed mouth vessels, vasculum parsing moisture into veins of language- like a nursing sea lion summons its seedlings, urgently?
Often my mouth meditates on sprouting wings, flying into a sensation yet uttered
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Imagine
this entire existence as God's astral projection emanating from the larynx of everything is sprawled out upon the cosmos, the contents of a golden heart played out on star-line harp strings and the whole of creation an array of melody, a variance of sound upon the tongues of our lives is a universal jam session, as funky and mellow as is frenetic, free-moving, topical out of pocket Motown blues and greens ebony & ivory coast to coast sometimes a bit too wild as the wind for harmony played on bird-bones to bones | | it all connects when spirit meets word in deed a sight to listen, to attune with eyes that age like sequoias. Stable to still the shaking
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when the bass earthquakes the axis out of tune with reality I am sometimes too in tune with the tap on the rim of my dreams to look up and see God
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On Incongruity Right there, on the tip of your eye, a song trying to stammer its way out, turning stream trickle into divergent deluge on the edge of infinity pooling from puddle to systematically lapping seven seas. Tears in time, heal the fabric, hem the lyric in.
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Embolism Heaven cares for those with stained hearts, they make the most beautiful murals on windows, all shimmer in the dark crimson of the cornea, a crucifixion marring the white of the eyes, enlarged blood vessels cry out Eloi Eloi, as we wait for Nissi to turn tear ducts into Rapha. Imagine eyeballs grew heel and tendon, could walk away from some sites, could plod along others, mosaic last supper, heaven cares, those stained hearts fed love deny Christ thrice, and preach the gospel. Heaven cares, those stained hearts know resurrection better than any.
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Blaxploitation poem Sonny, a mixture of Spike Spiegel and early Spike Lee, so cinematic in the way he combatted stereotypes, chopped down chain link fences around his character, calamity crackled off his knuckles like fine lightning each time he licked shots, like suspense scenes in screenplay, off the top of his tonsils. He punched verbs off his tongue like emancipate, till it freed him from doldrums of elitism, bureaucracy beat the tone of life blunt enough for percussion to lose its edge. Sonny fought on ledge tip, always an inch away from falling or flying The pull of his dialect universally tidal; pulling wind whence ever way it needeth list, framework of his speech quite sturdy, sorta poetry made after The Carpenter, careful, practical smith of words like ultra-soft air pellets blasted from Smif, telling Western wind, "you gon carry that weight" without speaking a word. Beetle black hair and steely eyed stare of a man
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could etch a papyrus parable on how peculiar it is to see the pacifist Bruce Lee skillfully parry played out notions, carefully hewn ideologies Bruce Banner hulking over the opponents. Antique archetypes lay wasted, a graveyard articulated like arterial rot, dross in the aortas, only the ancient wisdom of love pried through the rubble, fully purged. Straight out the ruff like yarn stretched diamond, God's eyes never close. The reel spills forward.
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Bridge, the session in the gap 3000 crammed into lecture hall for a glimpse of the bridge: breath of the drumbreak reverberating in their chest, cave of providence collapsing in and expanding on itself. Few care to cater to the chorus calling them to innovate, illustrate for a new-school. Integrate a bit of that old-school Ruby Bridges, muck up your high-end societal ball, infuse a little Walter into wither of that waltz, nobody wants to dance a dead dance. Muddy up dem waters, already sullied up dem poorer shades a’ blue, bleed em rich red like the warm veins of the folks that ain't currying favor in your curriculum books compared to folks that do. "Aye Sonny, can we take em to the bridge!" Bet that part of the song sounds like the diaspora dilating in the void of your documentation. Drags on like the dirge dusted off, decades swollen with the sweltering heat we donned dog days of Autumn; a slow undressing of funeral clothes doled out like swigs from a canteen. Bet you wading thigh-deep in that Mississippi felt like 3 stacks of bible verses tracing coconut oil into the chafed and chapped crevices of those tendons, fortifying the deceased marrow with a word more livelier than, "It's always been that way in the South" See that's the meat of the song.
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The juice and the pulp. This, the sweet citric acid of the lemon soaked in black iced tea. To cause a song to bleed from blue to red is to affect change in the way we color things. To bring that thing curled up on the inside of chest outside. To draw it alive Any fool, even that Joe Jimmy hey'd, knows you can't make a song with no heart. Can't be all exposition Tin-man, naw wiz kid you gotta ease your bottom down that dandelion brick road, find that funk in your hips
shake, that old tired groove,
dust dem shoulders off.
Sonny knew the whole song, scale by scale scalding hot in his speakerbox soul. That bridge got em where they wanted to go though
Shouts out to Bridge Over Troubled Water - Aretha Franklin
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Sonny day jazz on Rollins Street Sometimes the jazz rolls in just right like a fog or a baritoned madness, chaotic chemistry in the way those chords tie in to the theme of progression, a rolling octave of newness, booming drum roll of the fresh funk, cats either dig or get dug in it. Sometimes the sax shovels out sunshine in scoops, over the blues and the blacks, the bruised music bellowing on through brute honor. Sometimes it shovels over it. Sometimes the jazz rolls in just right, like low tide or a hurricane missing a metropolis. Sometimes the jazz is the storm in its afterglow, vapor in its uprising, the sunshine baking the cookie sheet street all chipped and cracked at the curbs. A sunny day rolling in lifting the gloom.
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In the midst A name like Oasis, gave impression she didn't know what it meant
to be mired in dust
at root depth in her
attempting to bubble its way up,
and outward;
gash dehydrated overlay of apathy so customary to those hurt by others, whom others have hurt. Others hurt others sometimes they don't always know how to stop sometimes from happening too often Something about heartbreak works like stopgap siphon on heart valves, making the shift in music clingier to that awful and awkward reverse of love, a bit harder to wrench forward. She knew what it meant to spread across basin, only too find the earth a little too dry. To empty one's self into a ravenous cup, is to lose balance in balm.
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She had this way of reattaching moisture to the smile in her soul's sag, droplet by droplet. Of stitching together fresh sheets of rain right before the remnant of the runoff, runs off. But with a name like Oasis made it seem she was always mirage in the desert or a more real salvation, like she didn't need some saving too. Something about sometimes, makes hurt others runoff like rainwater, like storm stuff.
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When Oasis Gets Blue (ode to Sonny King Cole) When Oasis gets blue her hair gets matted and navy bludgeons the reign to fall, citadel shatter. Love is home, in the bones nothing else can matter. Sweet love of God to call calcium in the marrow. When Oasis gets blue, she a teal sigh bending sadness, as the wind that stirs seeds, Love bleeds the wind into the straying droplets, sowing sodden seeds into the waist of the melody. People, used to hear her laugh, see her smile. That's how she found her name, had an affair with a lost smile, stylus perforated watercolor droplets in the same memories faded into peculiar, not yet pristine dreams geysered up where her other dreams had sunk down. Hurry eternal love, hurry here to bleed each tear into a kiss on canvas – heart pounded blue held near the origin, first pen prick in ocean's aurora. People, used to hear her laugh, see her smile. That's how she found
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her name, had an affair with a lost smile, style is perforated watercolor droplets in the sane. Hurry new love, hurry here, to kiss away each lonely tear And hold her near when Oasis gets blue
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On Empire and potential
She was Kush, caramelized sand browned to the touch in just the right glaze, nothing glazed over no ceramic doll strung up on slack lines. Leaking her blackness all along the canvas loosened from taboo catered to more than color. She more than cliff notes, more than lax footing on history's all too crumbling mountain. No she was nourishment, more than crumbs, not fit for side of mouth sentences. She was wholly open mug, orated from lion's larynx. Lioness smoothing links of food chain, crooning the most peaceful armament, love song to a war child, lullaby to a Lazarus symptomed tribe letting them know slumber had no more biting sting.
He wanted to know why coffee sprung out of his pores,
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saturated air sitting on skin like freshly stirred sawdust at thought of her musk sweetly scented music in his thoracic, thumping thunder striking sides of that steeple deemed cerebellum seared and sautĂŠed, her vibe was nutritious, munch worthy, eating praise tongue had not yet unearthed from that Sphinx of Giza soiled heart. He was swaddled in the soul of and sung from the spirit of lioness. They were simmering syntax, slightly skewed left-handed handle to pot calling the kettle Kemet. Kinetic energy injected into each other's lives, ejected from the hive immune to the drone of the din scraping against their eardrums. She was blatant star streaking against the bland of the dim. She was Kush he was ite. They were them.
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Ode to (let's call her) Ororo Yours is a beautiful storm Sometimes I want to watch the lightning dance while the thunder sings in you.
Kiss the clouds until, like the first drops of rain on an otherwise parched pavement we greet each other, mingled thought patterns creating a vibrant rhythm
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The Cove II Her heart lay on my soul like a lake I kept the pelicans at bay
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For wife XIV Hello, we've meet before; for I am only one half of the greater soul we are meant to create. We were framed, grafted face: to: face in permeable portrait of sentient sentiments frame fades into frame.
One of the earth's original, watercolors we are stenciled in God's heart.
Today, a day we meet again
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Grazed the twine The first time I swallowed my tongue, it was cow-heavy coated in cud, pores plastered over, muddy thoughts masking its flavor. The first time, it was like an MJ fadeaway not going in at the buzzer, bouncing off the back iron-thick blood coagulating from the stem of where my tongue lay snipped at umbilical cord, no longer nutrient flow, no longer birthing that Game 7 we ain't going home without ring finger bling feel, unaware of how ready my heart was to be married to thrill of that clutch shot latched off la lengua, rolling of tongue and over the outstretched ears of the Mutombo's of the world and swished into the cerebrum. "There will be no finger wagging here," is what I wanted to say, but it's hard to speak or shoot straight with a swallowed tongue. The first time, tongue swallowed and tied to the hollow of the abdomen, felt, felt like Bulls couldn't go on parade no more, sea of red tracing down the trail of my throat for all the lost thoughts, all the ones whose crossover crossed them over, couldn't break game down quick enough to Hoop Dream awake, like vault to a bank heist that door was too close to gold to ever open for those bronze skinned
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boys. A parched tongue don't taste too good, buds get dried out quicker than roses left to scorch on asphalt. Bet you Derrick can vouch, how quick the speech shifts, when you ain't earning your due, and every word you utter sound like unwelcome, like you draining water from crystal clear faucet. Bet you Flint can vouch, how some throats meant to swallow lead and others get a filter. Bet you Tamir can vouch, how some ain't rationed much talk before served a hot meal. The first time I swallowed my tongue, it was a cold meal the way those sunken words milled, first in the grill of my mouth and then in the pit of my ambitions. Gutsiness, must be gale-heavy, the way rawness in your blueprint comes forth in a gust. Demands a great deal of intestinal fortitude to regurgitate a tongue, will that last shot off the glass to rattle home through the rim
Ask Hakeem, when all else fails, couldn't let the dream shake 'em
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Sophia Wilansky (your name less crude than what they fought you over) Chalk white bone bled red, a mutilated peninsula of a fresco, a promontory of peeled back alabaster vessel shredded at the radial and ulnar, her blood flow concussed. Had to have been a million grenades thrown back and forth through the nervous system, pulling apart at fiber, neurons firing a smoke flare up and through spinal cord. There was something wrong with this picture, pixelated on my cell phone, wildly thrashing about in my gut, a digested war raging against my rib cage. air deposited hypothermic presence fused with the blood curdling liquid heat, of flesh prematurely exposed. chalk bone, newly brittled burnt red & I can't quite relay that there was not enough skin where her fully functioning arm used to be, I mean no word "The force of the explosion blew the bone out of her arm." meaning the underneath bone bled upward because there was no
support system to
how do you describe memory, obfuscation, ulnar artery & bone. Integral pieces of the forearm here words fail, again
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in her forearm, no longer 20 muscles, flexors fragmented
& a poem can't always be failsafe lever to seal the emotion in Morton Police chief, Kirchmeier, a topple of words that don't really connect, to themselves a cadre of "uh"s less than the full revolution: "the best option we had at that point"
regarding the water cannons, not the concussion grenades or the "rubber" bullets. They coat those bullets in rubber. Conceal the metal cylinder; add fine print to "protect and serve" On the same arm, later ruptured at the skin, police -prior to the rupture, that is -fired a rubber sphere, perhaps to alert her "The best-case scenario is no pain and ten to twenty percent functionality" - Wayne Wilansky
Part of this poem, breaks off words, tend to fail as a system, in which it is illegal to protect our water. keep what keeps us
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List on Sonny don’t fit like the collar just a bit too noose necked, like the vest too Vietnam memorial, too vestige of tribal blood snatched from its definitionI-I-i think they call it land when feet feel soil fertile and firm, not nail glued to scorched root policy like soil immersed in too many capitalist courses, too well versed in consumerism. You see this land feel all bite, big devour, null on nourish real big on flourish in flower pot cemetery. Sonny feel too boxed in corner, crammed into envelope eschewing postmark. Feel too shoved into glove box memories. Too "license and registration please" too ain't at ease, don't enunciate them words too well but feel free to slam your skull against a padded glove carrying anvils in the knuckles with all the malice of a concussion waiting to happen. Bleed your emotions here
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on this boxing ring canvas, we need brute, please don't be bullhorn. We don't need another Ali. You can fight your way out of this brown paper bag all you want. Just don't be Ali. Just don't get or stay too smart for your own good, Sonny. We need you to paint canvasses, for our amusement
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L The sound of dropped change on cement carries the distinct sound of chains dragging. The sound of dangling ambitions sold in the wind. Leach green paper kites meeting early demise from that dehumanizing downdraft. Money shuffling in wallet mimics the sound of an overpacked warehouse somewhere empty boxes shifting up against each other with everything to promise and nothing to prophet except more dropped change and more cupped hands on the cusp of giving everything for no refunds. A system stagnant as cement, sturdy as wet sand. Listen well you can hear the savior singing, something ain't sound.
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Where the only recourse is to invest in something of a higher price than can be attained on Earth :: It is Love
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On wishes of tax-exemption It seems we pay more nowadays to bury dead bodies, all too still beating heart of the masses, minimized into minority, mummified with them, still mumbling condolences to each other for not being more massive. Taxing, tell ya it takes its toll, ministers made more necessary during death time ticking, time tucked away safer than the weightiest tokens, gratitude clutched to chest. CNN says compassion is rare these days, who trusts the media? hands fall faster than dead bodies, those bullets with disavowed brakes drove through, red lighting up chests, stop life. Oh you ain't heard? Hands fall faster that way, hands fall faster these days who can write coffins fast enough to bury dead tax funded bodies? A cruel taxonomy of an urban economy. Taxidermic in the way we stuff truths in the corpses of murdered black boys. Marble and oak, crafted from the bark of poetry, adorned with enough meaning to mirror regal sarcophagus, scarred Egyptian gold melted in the loose molds of the soul molten intensity magnified by a motherhood
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far too acquainted with loss, in fact oftentimes bosom buddies, bride to sorrow the woes of the brown mother: a beatitude in its promise not to be eternal.
Someone stop that infernal noise; strangest percussion drumming on the skin of apple soiled and stained burnt burgundy, blood green. The steady thud of the federal reserve churning out chains wrapped around wallets and not necks, heavy as hearts at a funeral the death of equity enviable to no man or woman Nowadays death seems to have an appetite for black bodies, unhinged jaw of the anaconda mauling the poor, swallowing whole batches of chefs in cop costumes sure to oblige. Died a bit when we all realized we pay nowadays, fund a machine that files out dead bodies fills out dead bodies like tax returns
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On color, wills, and toddlers "I'm sorry kiddo, that crayons sometimes get crippled in color lines drawn outside of the margin of the reality of love of creation. I don't know what to tell you, but I apologize." Upon this house of lies their stones will be cast at the temple of your head, and my heart like buckshot’s from the barrel of a shotgun, 400 years loaded and festered. 400? Maybe not as accurate as 16 shot volleys robbing life of volition. Sometimes the barrel of the skin rots into gun grafting its way, molten heat onto the conscious of the holder. Death has a way of leaping out the holster haphazardly enough for premature coronas, prejudice has a strange way of coloring outside the chalk lines, burgundy coronation on concrete too acrylic to peel off blinders on public’s eyes. I apologize junior, some see intentions as accidents, repeat offenses as a justified amendment to peace. See the creases in the freshly ironed denim of black boys soiled with splotches of the most sacred paint and feel nothing Some peel the wet pictures
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caked over with aqua green tears of siblings who had siblings, snatched away like the portrait no one knew how to interpret, and won't weep. Instead they place it on an easel until it dries and prick holes into the framework until it resembles mugshot because child, this suits their eyes or their egos, which are plastered over their eyes, a bit better. And this, is all bitter no sweet pungent taste to swallow it down with. All glue bottle turned meal no warning, not to indulge adhered to; so it seems they've got we into a sticky situation. Souls pasted to the understitching of the stomach praying that no one pries it loose, molds it into a massacred macramĂŠ of an ordeal. "I'm sorry kiddo, you are only a toddler barely tilling the first flickers of your time here and still, you have to be taught, from the beginning how not to be drawn up taut in your own blood & pigment, outlined in someone's chalk, for neglecting to fit their color wheel"
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The good surprise wasted on Sonny, it was no surprise; Dad wasn't real keen on recurrent night terrors often tearing psyche until the floorboard planks creaked at the hinges, hacking at the brute force of hegemony nailed over REM like Dogwood over a mahogany coffin until he could Lazarus his way from under the heavy plaster of his blanket; a damp and daunting force. Waking, as if piercing Saran wrap seal of ocean surface, or fighting gravity in a mudslide: Always a struggle, always worth it. That first burst of air clutched to his chest, planted resilience in lungs like hegari seeds; testimony sowed over bowed heads like the first amen on a muggy August morning, hallelujah on a loop like a confession eased out of culprit who mugged his breaths. Whole time trying to break the cycle, appease the strain on his daydreams so his last breath wouldn't shoot out; last bullet train out a dark tunnel with no light, that bad surprise
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Art of the Martial Law (Amaranthine Procession)
Marathon of marigolds comforting the silhouettes of caskets, and in some eyes race conversation still awaiting on starter's pistols, yet bullets keep sprinting into brown bodies. Speaking of origins: ሕይወት እና ሞት Life&Death (Amharic) Language spore of Semite seed, stemming roots of Aramaic: shaphaya(thorn) crowned in ceasefire; a crimson white flag. Peace: Shalom (Hebrew) Rage brewed over, drunken fury (English America) land of the homeless, freed of the braves, Trail of tears, trekked in a bloody soot. Black and red go together like pistol and flesh, scraped off skin, the most unwelcome intrusion, and oh so blistering greeting. This meeting ground is nothing new, soiled with talk of phrenology, genetic inferiority politics, discussion of socioeconomic status, welfare, republican ideology, stand your ground amendments to justice & inevitably black on black crime; littered with gun shells splattered across ground; the most gruesome sunflower seed oil pastel and brown bodies; soil and pot for most bitter and strangest of fruit.
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Ask yourself, does the sun wilt or wither at its own undying heat, does it peel at petals, blackening towards the edge of the rays. Or does it draw inspiration from the ocean beneath it, scouring the blood off its skin through diffusion. Diluting the sting, balming the ache. Reconciliation, key to progress in a door that's been jammed shut for eons, too many flowers withered sour on pine boxes to calculate to absolution. Too many pleas for assimilation to appease. The nature of the beast is to badger antagonized with unwarranted defenses, attack dog mentality, grip the throat with claims of thug to demonize, as if eye for an eye shifted into thought for a stilled heart. And the offenders, wear government credentials like gold chains around their neck and are acquitted in judicial fraternities. A war of stereotypes with unarmed civilians caught in the crosshairs of the fray. In holy text tried and true method of conflict solution approached like this: "Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother" Oscar Grant Trayvon Martin Tamir Eric Garner Mike Brown Eric Garner
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Sandra Bland Aiyana Stanley Jones Aiyana Stanley Jones ........(an ellipsis struggles to disperse silence) "But if he will not hear thee, take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established" Black Lives Matter rebutted by All Lives meanwhile Darren Wilson and George Zimmerman roam free. Athletes protest anthems, Dwayne Wade mourns a family member. Spike Lee makes a movie, nobody knows why they keep boring through bodies in North Carolina. Jada Pinkett Smith foregoes the Oscars, the St. Louis summer is sweltering, Ferguson is muralized and black parents clutch their children a bit closer to the chest, further firmer with their love. The dots in the ellipsis are connected like a constellation to draw the bigger picture from the inkwell. Marigolds does not a child return, no matter how undying the love of a mother or Heavenly Father. BANG! I know you heard it, feet better be ready to bolt or, sound of another morgue trip in the inner city.
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Anamnesis
Rainwater has an immanent aptness to reify resurrection, to regenerate, blur the stilled drip of death into spate of life. To be conceived immaculately as ideas form again, amnion encloses, the vessel begins to shed corpus en route to oeuvre. Because nothing is really lost in the runoff, when the blood is serous and the serum is eternal, the ocean cups itself- hand over where the mouth is streamed throughin cycles. Evaporation lends to ebb what nadir affords to nautical mile; how the fluidity & fullness of love like the sea, escapes, indescribably an imperfect & eternal measurement. The terse, humidity of the atmosphere tends to reverse where pages are soaked through and amidst. The wounds tend to sinew where the skin grafts to droplet, and the holes in the empyrean parchment imbibe vital precipitation and the quill tends to plummet in immolation for the sere aquifers below. And the condensation disseminates, the water means to write itself again. The swell begins to slim off the slough of this pond, celestial lull in globulin and the ocean's bloodlines combust into a breathing pulse, lullaby is dispensed as the rainfall pounds the face of the deep into recall: Azure alarm, soothingly sung marigolds freshly awoke on the side of riverbed.
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Directly from Sonny (Side B)
* stuffs fresh cassette into tapedeck*
*hits record* Needles crash against records daily, crag collapses, plummets into ocean plume, a winged mist preened daily by the record player. That is to say, maestro keeps the motion flowing, in tow, the tunes compact, collide kaleidoscope of a sonant, which is to say existence is sonic. Sonnets to sonatas; rhythm I can't call it but the wind is humming with the taste of it. Awoke from stasis back when I learned how to be a cathedral of a man, milk praises from the marrow in me, let it breathe through the hemoglobin excelled, become a monument of glory down to the molecular structure; extend from a modicum. Needless crash against records daily, water don't ask for much, not to be polluted only to be illustrated and we serve a great Illustrator. Blare of the early morn trumpet, spewing sundust out the front horn
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of heaven, like a jolt of light; awoke, from stasis sorta memory reminds me of how I first found Oasis on the front temple pew. Not a single spot nor blemish to taint her church organ smile; see we was passing ciphers through the teeth of the struggle. Wasn't always so easy to take a chance. Grandma gifting me Sunday's candies a fine coat lining seething pot of my adolescence. Lemonheads and Crybabies, Warheads right after Vietnam souring the caw of my sweet tooth. How many times that bitter note, crowed out of tune, crawled out of belly? No sugar cane mills in sight, but I once (we) crunched star in twain, just to prove 'could be done. Now the two systems speak in binary; a bit mechanistic in their discord, forgetful of the one accord so dearly afforded to em. When Moses parted Red sea, in turn the two styles collapsed upon themselves, which is to say mercy melded with vengeance, or the parched sea trench refreshed itself. Some souls had to go home though. Adonai, the sort of title waves banner of regency, reward me with a dousing of mornings The First Breath breathed life into. Distill, the disconnect: you know, like Christ and late noon lynching which is to say black crucifixions swaying
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to the southern breeze. These days the nails are hollow at the point of the conversation, there is peace, Love is the why. High time we asked the resurrector rewind, one time, recollect and inspect the defector. All while the broken beats mended by Tanya Blount & Lauryn Hill sweetly cooed about an eye on a sparrow. Which is to say, in the sum of it all we are still existent and the notes won't stop filling, filling up blank decay
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If death were wasp To think Christ as religion of entropies emancipated from disorder, or
less religion
more journal of death's demise. Center compacts comprised of an eternal energy; universe forever here You and I verse this in catalogue poem, numerous lines labored into 365 stanzas or maybe the days margin sketch onto pages, years the real movement. Or true melody scrunched & combed out of minutes like honey and apricot juice oozed from accordion Either way, book breaks down into little segments fine as coconut shreds uprooting the superfluous until more meaning rests in space where wounds in the words are healed
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Dayspring V How the blue of the lake lapped its way into ocean, Sun spilling over the banks of the sky, depositing joy deep in the belly of the brine, sight to savior, having regained its prophet. Resurrecting a flood of brevity, streamed through the vessel. I love you sketched into a straight-line flow. As if to say, these are my cups if you would bear them
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On Matthews 5:8 and a number of other verses Verve stitched into each vessel ounce by eight ounce, bred into eight beatitudes, humble as the day breaks, dawn resurrects for an 8th appearance, the very hearts circumcised with the tenderness of sunlit rations to the body ratios of spoken word transmitted to radios of spiritual love, a holy quaver in the reverence rendered to the renderer of the clay
foot holds to the design mold dissipates into each unique chord of a cup distancing the malady, which is to say the mil(dew) drops in the fervency of the heat, sow to speak, purgation is a kiln tethering the filth to the trial
and you gotta scrape that stuff off the barrel. is to say the mugshot,
which
(I mean to say, vignette) is a lifetime in the making and the pictures, ummm
pieces move like 8 times or days before
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the skin fully heals the redolence shines in ceramic like resin, which means the cleansing is in the creation-Creator, which is to annul synthetic. I mean a cup is only as pure as the contents. The water was never polluted, the heart just forgot to stay verdant. The brim just forgot the breath of the Creator. I mean ain't that the type of auric to cleave to the soul?
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Let her be itch crawling down the spine of your nerves. Hard to get at like Calculus, same polar magnets, or a sophisticated woman. Let her be as authentic and unabashed as a bee, itch unflinching tingle of words buzzing behind your ear is a stinging of comfort zone nagging words dragging behind like holey burlap rags disguised as knapsacks carrying nothing but your or her aggravation, you can't really tell... puzzled and pausing the cinema in your head must've got unreal or hooked in a line of bootlegs tripping over a tangled reel because somewhere along the trip of neurons forgot whose image got grainy, words fished out of mouth-heart got real murky So you called her a bitPlease let her be, human. Deemed, anything but a female dog.
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Where the speech had tattered ends We hail from the mother land of ghetto messiahs, you know ghetto in its literal sense. More, depiction of deferred dreams stitched together with loose-leaf scraps, than an over abused stereotype.. You see ghetto like cramped in corner huddled over cracked pipes too worn from crying out for peace, or at least ceasefire of the exploitation of a culture. Hold the pain though, “like shards of glass conformed to a rose you are beautiful to the eye but more worrisome than thorns leading to no bloom� Ghetto messiahs who crossed paths with compassion and a story to tell. So we be life poets. We breathe in ink stains and exhale piano keys, sordid symphonies, and a golden dove speckled with spots of mahogany. No we breathe in ink stains. Lifting the story leaving its scent in our vocal cords. Ghetto messiahs we speak a hostile gospel to the uninitiated heart. Maybe we just spark a flame in the dark to keep the cold off our heart.
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*ghetto a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure *ghettoan isolated group
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Selah (The Splendor of the Creator disclosed in the motion) Have you ever stuffed cicadas into the coil of a caesura, (the space so swollen with silence even crickets too loud a pause)? Sounds rarely simmer to complete stop, in the sullen hum and sway of the song there is a sweet in the seedlings
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No Greater Love, floats, in time
In ocean they are named schools, institutions of what land-trekkers call pupils, scholars to the oxygen in our irises, In an atmosphere of sea particles spread apart by our Provider, eyes re taught to disassemble label of pariah, free the prey who prayed until prison became aqua prism through which that thinning and thinning veil separates the surface from the submerged. Still searching for first gasp of air, piercing the dankness of the lessons piled upon like recycled sea cells, locking the lungs into a stagnant world-like view piled up like whitewashed history books, wet and clingy against the skin. It's a daily task like arithmetic, counting out those misenumerated seconds lost to faulty facts and even faultier faculty, sometimes phenomena placated by blue deep prying at our systems of sight, when ears are plugged by the drumbeat of the ocean it gets a bit difficult to funnel a fresh sound from above Cool breeze descends from on high accompanied by pitter patter of rainwater, like a Swiffer jet stream upon the deep of the ocean, sweeping debris up through the face of water, like a net of fish flung upward through the mouth of the ocean. Lifted the dust and scales off Eye, see clearly
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with a tint of Grace tinge of forgiveness bluegreened into the melody of the crash of the Red Sea, crest of the cadaver sits on a wave rings through the raucous body below like the highest pitched twinge of a guitar string plucked, too hard yet soothed back into a soft euphony downright and upright euphoric in nature, massaged through the scales of time, as extraordinary as a universal eye ablaze of sunlight, blinking,
or an ocean luminous with the eternal radiance of life. Life's most brilliant and fluid raiment, the gift of Christ
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And the kiln repairs the mend
A super liminal linen; luminous thread of glory clothed upon us by the immortal Father, Our El Olam, the eternal El Shaddai, a remnant unraveled like a once budding, now blooming wildfire before Esh Olam, the sustainer of the soul, Sun still brazen, swollen in the sternum, the most delicate, beautiful bruising of blue flame in the bones, not a blemish or blunder, nor crack on the ceramic of the heart. Jeremiah couldn't stop aqueduct on his mouth, drawing from the mental of the glory, glorious One glorified through the gored through spear-driven image of Son- Father resurrected. An eternal well, hyphen without caesura, bloodline coursing through eternal will, never to be perished, never to be broken not a single piece of skeletal frame, forcing fallacies to peel away beneath the precious permutations of love, providing a paradigm for a lineage to be laid in the golden grooves of heaven's rivers, Rapha, Our Healer, born upon a tree and planted by a river of blood and water, splashes of coagulated compassion strewn along the crucifix seedbed making way for a 12-herbed sapling, fountainhead to alms for Adam's ailment, pristine Euphrates for Eve's thirst.
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Here Arises Jesus, piercing through the night sky as the golden break of dawn. Cloth repaired, etched in time on a papyrus tablet, inked in silken filaments of blood. Never has a wire been more live
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Basin for the Overflow Sonny- an ode to Sonny Bridges, Rollins, Liston & a myriad of other Sonnys. He’s a hybrid archetype of what I feel a dynamic protagonist should have. Sonny’s determined, innovative, & self-made. The Droplets are the expositional portal into the first taste of him. Oasis- She’s the lead love interest & a source of comfort, identity, & peace for Sonny. When the lights get so bright that day becomes a dreg of dust & dead things, she’s a well of motivation. Droplets •
There are 16 connecting poems which really sparked the whole idea of the book. I also wanted them to mirror their namesake
Time dreams revelations •
•
stigma [ 1. Mark of shame or discredit. 2. part of the pistil of a flower which receives pollen or grain & on which they germinate] stigmata [wounds resembling those of the crucified Jesus]
Grazed the twine • This was written after Steven Willis’ “The First Time A Man Attempts To Fight His Father”, which is a phenomenally performed oral illustration. Go watch it on YouTube. • What happened in Flint, Michigan was horrendous. Kids are now at risk because of the holy grail of political ultimatums (cost cutting at the
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expense of constituents). The brazen disregard for human life exhibited soured in my stomach & left a curdling contempt for our government’s prioritization of corporations over humanity. Please find a way to assist the Flint residents if at all possible.
On Wishes of tax-exemption • Shout out to Bad Jacket for including this in their magazine. L •
This poem is a chronicle of how the crippling effects of debt & the monetary system conjoin to mechanize life. “For the love of money…”. But then again perspective is everything, it ain't a death sentence
Art of Martial Law (Amaranthine Procession) •
This poem was a grueling release & an attempt to reach some sort of reconciliation between law enforcement & the communities they are asked to protect & serve. While neither side is perfect, I have been repeatedly disappointed by the criminal justice system and its methods (& at times negligence) of maintaining order throughout the country. While I’ll maintain that not every officer is reprehensible & upholding the law is no enviable task, I believe a fundamental change is needed in how the police & all communities interact. Primarily, depending on methods of de-escalation as opposed to acts of force where at all possible.
On Matthews 5:8 & other verses
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In some circles the # 8 is said to symbolically represent regeneration, new beginnings, & the resurrection of Christ. In other circles (or maybe the same) it’s said to represent infinite good in the universe. In music a note with the duration of one eight of a note is a quaver.
And the kiln repairs the mend • Researching the meaning of those Hebrew terms of endearment for God adds layers to the poem.
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